Parlor Trick
by Dr. Abraxas
Summary: Mrs. Higurashi doesn't want to be alone. She finds friends & becomes confident enough to date. What can go wrong?


I don't own Inuyasha, I don't profit by this in any way, shape or form. This is written simply for my own, personal (disturbed?) amusement. This disclaimer applies to all chapters of this story.

Written for forthright's 2nd Halloween Challenge and accepted even though it's way longer than the 500 word count limit.

I leave the pairing as a surprise -- although I have hinted of it especially in my shorter works.

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"Parlor Trick" by Abraxas (07-10-24)

There was something about the man that she could not resist.

But what could it be?

Those eyes with their deep, violet gaze that revealed a quiet yet smoldering intensity. Those lips whose whisper of a voice stoked fantasies she could not imagine were possible anymore. Those hands with their seductive and hypnotic touch that urged her into shedding inhibitions. Each quality alone would have been enough to leave her breathless – combined the effect was beyond human.

Were animal-magnetism flesh he would be it so it was _impossible_ to resist a man of such power.

"This place is quiet," she said of the neighborhood. "It must be nice to get away from that noise."

"All the better to –" he started aloud but ended with whisper.

His words sent a shiver through her body, as if by orgasm.

"You!" She giggled and blushed, feeling teenaged again. She covered her smile with the back of her hand. "I can't believe I followed you. I can't believe anyone like you would be interested in anyone like me."

"You underestimate yourself."

He tapped her hand then, one by one, wrapped his fingers about her palms. He drew yet closer still falling into an embrace. He kissed her neck, her cheek, her lips all the while pressing, grinding hesitantly against the body of the woman.

She withdrew with a gasp, surprised by her urge to continue.

Wrapped by the blanket of night, it was the closest, most intimate act she shared with a man since –

"You are more alive than anyone I know."

"Well." Again she turned red as she realized then and there the indecency of the moment yet not regretting it. "I'm just not used to it."

She broke free of his embrace then held his hand.

He led her into the lobby of the building – it was the site of his apartment and the scene inside was as quiet as the world outside.

Ever since her husband – well – she lived the life of a dutiful mother. With a girl entering college and a boy starting high school, it was easy to fall into the routine of domesticity. And in time to forget what it was like to live, even, to be a woman.

At last, when she made the choice to want to be happy again, she feared that _it_ was over. That her time passed. She imagined the market, such as it was, was the place for the young not the old. Where was she, a woman of middle-age, supposed to go to find a date even a friend? But, once she summoned that courage and explored that brave new world of single-life, she discovered she felt so alive just to be among that generation of the night.

Men did not notice, that was true, yet her desire for companionship was sated by those women who became her girlfriends. She lived vicariously through them, watching but not interfering as they wandered from relationship to relationship. Was that not a kind of life? Or the next best thing to being alone?

And it was exciting because she hid that life from her family.

With that night's tryst there would be a story to hide from her girlfriends, too, even Eri!

Yes, usually men did not notice, but not lately, and not that man.

Now, after she trekked halfway across Tokyo, she could not believe she followed him into that building. She could not believe it anymore than she could remember the path taken. She was so distracted by his lure that she failed to note the direction they traveled, its twists and turns. It was like a fog dissolving everything but what she knew at that instant, that moment.

She chuckled with a mix of fear and arousal. She thought her girlfriends would be amused by her recklessness. She knew her family would be mortified by it.

Within the lobby she was struck by the ambiance. It was not the typical bright cramped lobby with security guards. Rather, it was an empty spacious void lit only by distant blue lamps. There were suggestions of movements beyond but it seemed to be more mechanical than organic. As they approached the rear, however, gaps of understanding were filled by details yet the flavor of a mystery persisted.

The lamps were attached to racks overhead; their lights did not reveal anything about the ceiling or the rest of the chamber as they were focused intently onto what appeared to be beds of flowers. Insects like moths or butterflies were flapping about the leaves they consumed – it was a feature that had been completely undetected across the distance earlier. Then what seemed to be a robot was really a boy who was working amid the foliage. It was a revelation that so shocked her she could have shrieked if she had not restrained that reflex.

For his own part the boy did not pay attention to the adults and his behavior as he walked about with a sprayer, certainly, was very machine-like.

She wondered, though, why a child would be awake so late.

Despite the weirdness, they continued onward toward the stairwell. She clutched onto his arm while he lead into the interior of the building.

She was nervous about the situation but Eri – who he took into his apartment a few days ago – said he was a gentleman and only wanted to talk.

Poor Eri, she thought and promised to visit her friend at the hospice tomorrow.

After a flight of steps, then the apartment's formal double doors, at last they entered the man's sanctuary. That parlor. The pattern of the lobby repeated: spacious, bare and dark. To the left was an unbroken wall; to the right was the alcove of a kitchen complete with those now-familiar blue lights. In front, the rest of the abode was cloaked by impenetrable shadow and darkness of such depth that it hinted the possibility of the infinite – if there had been stars she would have thought it a vision of space.

The last detail she noticed was the air: it was cool with intermittent gusts of warmth and kept a constant clean and earthy scent.

What was it that Eri said about his obsession with nature?

"I've searched all of time and space for you, Lady Higurashi. Or do you not believe souls are destined to meet again and again?"

She smiled, without hiding it, then shrugged.

"I'm just a simple mother and not one for adventure or excitement."

He touched her chin and stole another kiss. She pulled his body toward hers. Overwhelmed by the urge to be curious, and by a hunger long unfulfilled, she stroked the front of his pants and fondled the tent that formed between his legs. With a coolness that comes through experience, without betraying emotions of surprise or expectation, he held her hands, pressed her palms against the outline of his arousal, and then withdrew that contact.

"What you awake in me," he whispered.

"What you awake in me," she confessed.

He retired to 'change' while she waited within the chamber.

She wandered about.

In the kitchen the refrigerator was opened and revealed containers of water. There was no range though a gap remained where the appliance used to be. The sink was adorned by plants potted crudely into it and growing wildly out of it.

"Cleome," she said as she balanced a flower upon a finger.

The blue light of the lamps muted colors into shades of gray but the hue of the flowers escaped and remained vivid.

As eyes attuned to that balance of light and dark, she found a cabinet against the formerly barren and unbroken wall. It was full of paper. By the distant glow of the fixtures, words could be discerned but modesty prevented her from probing what could have been secret. She noted only that the hand was flawless and its style was arcane, as if centuries old.

A journal was open atop the chest. The page it displayed was blank except where a word, a name, was written: 'Higurashi' complete with exclamation. By that journal stood a candle almost fully consumed. Beside that candle rested two pictures that looked to be from the Meiji Era: one was a woman while the other was a boy. She was dressed in a white kimono with tinted red accents – a fan was prominent against her chest. He was dressed like a peasant – a strange, sharp tool attached to a chain was draped about his shoulder.

_Why were the faces familiar?_

Suddenly she realized that the man was gone a long, long time. A feeling of doom replaced the nervousness and excitement. Her mind was consumed by the litany of foolish deeds she committed that night. What would Eri and her girlfriends say? Worse! What would her family do? If she were harmed –

Where was he? Where was she?

She wanted to run out of the building!

But just as she was about to flee she was struck by another feeling. That it would be foolish to run away scared. Indeed, that to react with fear would be like admitting defeat. That, yes, her time passed. That she would be alone and that a need as basic as food and water would be denied forever. If she wanted a chance to be, happy then she needed to be stronger.

Yet she felt she went way too fast, way too soon.

She decided to leave but wanted to write a note to explain why.

That was when she noticed the doorway by the cabinet – when the man excused himself he must have gone through that exit. Realizing she would be happier with herself if she explained her discomfort face-to-face, she aimed to enter that passage and find him and tell him. No doubt, he _expected_ her to follow.

The passage led deeper into the building; the eerie blue haze across its distance broke the monotony of shadow and darkness that colored everything in and out of view.

There appeared to be another garden at the end of the tunnel. Something moved about the foliage. Something that appeared to be a blend of mechanical and organic. Was it the boy? Or was it the man?

Without another thought she stepped into the scene and screamed.

It was the shock not of what was found but of what was not found: there was no floor beyond the threshold of the passageway. She did not notice it until too late. She had been distracted by the sight of the garden, which was real though its pots and beds were suspected by chains not placed atop tables.

She fell but did not plummet: before she reached the garden of the lobby exposed below she was caught by a net of wet, sticky thread. Panicked, she tried to rise but those parts of the mesh that engulfed her body folded onto itself and the adhesion between the threads was too powerful to break. It was impossible to move but the most frustrating aspect of the ordeal was the fact that she did not fall far from the mouth of the passage – if she were not restrained, she could have reached onto the ledge and pulled free from the net.

Something – that something she only caught a glimpse of, whatever it was – something stepped onto the mesh and as it moved it shook the net violently. She screamed, confused and afraid, while she jostled about like a rag doll. The effect was unsettling, especially when she realized those cries of help were not answered, all the while, however, the web's rattling loosened the restraints.

With the ability to move more or less freely, she stood – ripping and shredding away those parts of her clothing that adhered onto the mesh – she forced her body up and into the passageway.

The shaking of the net became more and more frantic. The swaying of the web filled the air with a creaky, rusty sound accompanied by a new and terrible expression: a noise akin sandpaper against wood that made the hairs of her head stand.

Inside the hallway, her back toward the garden, she screamed again when she felt flesh, rough and hairy, press onto the nape of her neck.

She ran through the passageway into the parlor. From the wide double doors to the cavernous lobby. All the while it seemed as if her feet staggered paralyzed by fear. Along that escape she stopped to gaze aback once and the sight of _it_ would be the fodder of nightmare. With a single, definite image she understood everything and it was madness but it was too late to philosophize about could and could not be real in a universe without reason. She screamed _the name_ as she bolted out of the building.

Mrs. Higurashi screamed and jolted out of bed. Soaked by a cold and bitter sweat, she knew she could not break free of it, not from the image and not from the knowledge. Even if she lived a thousand lifetimes the memory of it was destined to cut across time and space.

"Onigumo," she wept, ashamed by all of it.

Though the body had been twisted into the shape of a beast yet the face retained a quality that could not be obliterated completely. The face _was_ beyond man. Especially those eyes. Just by the way they gazed and hungered, she knew it was him!

There were things about the world that mortals were not meant to understand – and, after all, something so beautiful, something so perfect, could not have been man.

END


End file.
